Toxic Charity

I just finished reading Toxic Charity by Robert Lupton after it being recommended to me by my friend Clancy. She said that I would love it and that it talked a lot about Nicaragua. I immediately ordered the book and started reading in. When I was only 6 pages in I sent Clancy a text telling her that I was already really enjoying the book. The book talks about how organizations and volunteers that are trying to help people often end up not helping them or even end up hurting them. This really made me think about my experiences in Nicaragua hoping that I had not fallen into these traps of compassionate thinking. As I read I saw situations where our group from Virginia Tech had made these mistakes and thought we were helping the people but ended up wasting time and not making the difference we thought we were.

After going on my first trip to Nicaragua I became very passionate about helping the people of Nicaragua. I knew that as a college student in the US I could make a bigger difference in the US raising awareness and money for the people of Nicaragua than I could if I was there. This is only true if the money that you are raising goes directly into helping the people. Luckily the parent organization of NOF, Nicaraguan Orphan Fund, is ORPHANetwork. They are an established Non-Profit that is doing a lot of great things for the people of Nicaragua. They help the people of Nicaragua help themselves. They help the local leadership develop the community. One of there more recent project was establishing a health clinic in Nueva Vida.
ORPHANetwork does a lot of great things but they aren't perfect. It's not there fault, it's groups like ours. All year round they have teams coming down from churches to college students trying to help. They don't say no to these people because they know that these people are going to support them financially after the trip. I have nothing against these trips, it was one of these trips that gave me the passion for Nicaragua. The problem is the people who are going on the trips attitude, I am included in this. We go and think that we can make a difference to this community in a week. We rush in and try to do something really good to help these people that are in need. We try and do service projects to help the people.

On my first trip on of our projects that we did was to dig holes where a fence was going to go. When I went back this summer I saw where the hole we dug were. They were filled in with dirt because they were about 6 inches off of where they were supposed to be. They weren't sure where the holes needed to be when we were there but they want us to have something to do as a "service project".

One of the other things that we tried to do on my first trip was give all the kids tooth brushes and teach them how to brush their teeth after eating at the feeding center. It was a noble cause and a good idea for American college students. The problem was that the people running the feeding center didn't care about them brushing their teeth. It isn't an important part of the culture in Nueva Vida. When I went back this summer there weren't any traces of the tooth brushes at the feeding centers. We can only hope that some of the kids took them home and use them there but it is doubtful.

Another project that we rushed into that ended up not being used as we planed was garden between the two buildings. We worked for hours moving rich soil in between these buildings so that they could have a garden. It wasn't there idea, it was ours. We wanted them to be able to grow vegetables there that they could serve in the feeding center. When I went back in the summer it was just dirt there between the buildings. The good part was that our idea about a garden had convinced them to try growing vegetables again in the vast amount of land that they had. The lesson that I learned from this was that instead of rushing into something, what us Americans are good at, develop a plan with the people to see how to better develop the community.
ORPHANetwork is doing a great job at that. When I was there this past summer they were meeting with Pastor Berman about a new project. They were having the kids that go to school teach the adults who didn't go to school how to read, write, and to do arithmetical. After a while they were planning on bringing in people from a bank to teach about finances.

While I was there this summer I learned the story of how the bakery in Nueva Vida was started. Everything besides the land that the bakery in owned by the bakery. I kept thinking about this while reading the book. It kept talking about how it is better have these small places owned and operated by locals. It is simple economics. It is better to give people in a situation like this a small loan instead of a grant. This keeps people working hard to advance instead of being dependent on other people's money.

An easy trap that many would be do-gooders fall into is giving stuff away freely. It is so hard when you see people in poverty and you just want to give them money or things so it will end. It isn't that easy. Like the saying: If you give a man a fish you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish you feed him for a lifetime. You run into a problem when you find someone that doesn't want to learn how to fish they just want you to give them a fish. I saw this in Moises' father.

Moises was the little boy that stole my heart and started my love for Nicaragua. He was always helping us do work. He was a hard worker. The last job that he was as a security guard. He lost his job when he got sick. One of the things that he did when he didn't have a job was to see coffee in Managua. The church he went to gave him the supplies that he needed to do it. He did it for a while but at some point he wanted money right away and he sold the containers he used for the coffee.

When I went back this summer he tried to get me to support them financially by sending them money. Pastor Berman came up with a better solution for how I could help them. I would help the church build him a hot dog cart on a bike. He didn't want to do this at first and really gave the impression that he was lazy. We were going to put the mother in charge to ensure that he wouldn't sell any of the equipment. We didn't get to put this plan into action because they moved out of Nueva Vida before I could get the money to them. This is the way we need to do our supporting. We need to listen to the people there. They understand what is going on so much better than us.

Saying goodbye to all of the kids in Nueva Vida on my first trip was really hard. A bunch of us were left with a bitter taste in our mouth from it. As we were trying to say goodbye all of these kids are asking us to give them things. They just wanted us for our stuff. We felt so used. Not all of the kids were begging but there was a good number of them begging. This was groups like ours' fault. We had conditioned them to believe that whenever gringos came that they got free stuff. It is our job as volunteers to be educated about the problems that we can easily create when try to help. If you had an important business deal with someone you would do your research before rush into anything. Why do we treat helping people any differently? Getting people out of poverty is much more important than any business deal and is way more complex.

One of the facts that I found surprising in Toxic Charity was that normally trips like this don't leave a lasting impact. Normally after 8 weeks people are back to the same assumptions and behaviors. I love that VT NOF defies that statistic. Social gatherings after the trip help remind everyone of the experiences they had in Nicaragua. Writing letters to the kids throughout the year helps us keep that connection which prevents us from going back to "normal". ONet does a good job at encouraging the NOFers to continue coming back to help. While I was in Nicaragua this summer there were 4 other girls from Virginia Tech in Nicaragua working with another Non-Profit, Manna Project. I just hope that other organizations and churches can learn from us and do similar things so that people coming back from other trips don't go back to "normal".

"Religious tourism", as Lupton calls it, is definitely a problem with trips like these. "... Princeton University conducted a study that found 1.6 million American church members took missions trips abroad in 2005 - an average of eight days long - at a cost of $2.4 billion. And the number has grown every year since." This is crazy. This money could have easily just gone directly to community development to help the people. A lot of this money went to airfare and lodging. I was shocked when I saw our data about percentage of the money that gave to ONet that way for trip cost vs donations. In the 2007-2008 school year only 4% of the money we sent to ONet was donations. 96% trip cost is ridiculous. Last year we gave ONet about $64,000 but $46,200 was trip cost, 73%. There have been some major improvements but we still have a long way to go. I was encouraged during our first leadership meeting last year because everyone wanted to improve this. Everyone needs to set a personal goal of money to raise solely for donations. It needs to be something challenging but achievable. You just have to have confidence that you will meet that goal. This year I am planning on raising at least $1,000 for donations to ONet. I am hoping to get a lot of this during the Compassion diet.

Once again I encourage everyone to read Toxic Charity. It is an awesome book. It is a really easy read. I read it in less than a day.